My father approached Russo about the possibility of taking over Fornarelli’s detail shop next door. Russo told my dad that Fornarelli had already agreed to vacate the premises, especially after making improvements, including installing a new garage door.
So when I approached Fornarelli about giving up his space, I was surprised to learn that Russo had already told John that the Calabreses had insisted on taking over his spot. For his trouble, Russo would give Fornarelli ten thousand dollars to move out.
My father and I confronted Matt and asked him why he had told Fornarelli he was being muscled out by us, which wasn’t true. Russo (wearing a wire) explained that the new partnership with me would bring him extra money, which he desperately needed. Much to Russo’s relief, my father bought the story.
It was a golden opportunity for the Feds. As they set up across the street, we were directly in their sights. They needed to document a few more illegal predicate acts* and our crew could be looking at a possible Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO) indictment. Much to everyone’s surprise, our new detailing shop was on the level and separate from the juice loan activities. When my father expressed reservations to Russo about his tow-truck-driving friend, Matt assured him that he used the driver only once in a while.
As it turned out, my dad had previously dealt with the mysterious driver. One afternoon after Uncle Nick had given my father the tow driver’s business card as one of Philly Beans’ potential new customers, he took the card and dialed the number.
The man on the other end of the line was agitated. “Who is this? Who is this?”
My father hung up the phone. “Don’t deal with this guy. He’s an FBI agent or an informant.”
“How can you tell after one call?” I asked my dad.
“A real tow truck driver wouldn’t be asking, ‘Who is this?’ He’d be used to getting calls at all hours for tows. I’m telling you he’s no good.”
When Matt tried to arrange a juice loan for his tow truck driver through my father, Dad refused. “I ain’t givin’ nobody no fuckin’ money,” he told Russo, “and if you’re doing something wrong, I don’t want to know about it.”
My dad’s warnings to Matt fell on deaf ears. Russo was already in the bag with the FBI. Under surveillance, my father and I weren’t doing anything unlawful. But how long before Dad gave in to temptation?
At one point when my father had a problem with a bumper, Matt pulled him aside and told him, “I can get you a bumper real cheap.…”
To which my father replied, “You better not be saying what I think you’re saying, Matt.”
“Oh no, Frank. I’m just joking around.”
When I opened up my new detail shop, my dad helped me strike a deal with the Celozzi-Ettleson Chevy dealership in Elmhurst to do some warranty work on their used cars. It proved cheaper for them to farm out their work to M&R than to have their own union shop repair, wash, and detail their used inventory.
Next, I hired neighborhood pal Johnny Marino, and brought in Lisa, who was pregnant at the time, to help out. M&R Auto and Detail was on its way! Whenever a used car from the dealership was brought in, Russo would do the necessary automotive work—oil change, new tires, tune-up, and other basic repairs—then pass it on to Marino and me to wash and detail so that it would look spotless on the lot. The dealer paid Russo and M&R for each car. Russo would then pay me my percentage for the wash and detail work.
In the beginning, whenever I would return finished detailed cars to the dealership every week, they would hand me a check to take back to Matt. One day Russo told me that the dealership was going to start mailing in their payments.
“Why mail the check?” I asked. “I’m there all the time. I can just pick it up.” I didn’t realize that payments based on fraudulent services and sent through the U.S. Postal Service would constitute mail fraud, strengthening the FBI’s case.
While Matt was under pressure to set up our crew, it wasn’t long before my father let greed get the better of him. On two separate occasions, he took the bait.
Russo approached my father and said he was behind in paying his back taxes. Rather than back off and not get involved, my dad instructed Kurt to go to the bank and withdraw the necessary funds. While lining up a loan for Russo, he convinced Matt to hand over a small percentage of M&R. My father struck a deal whereby his family would pay only for parts to get our cars serviced until Russo repaid the money.
Next, Matt told my father that he was in danger of losing his house. He was three months behind on the mortgage payments and the bank was ready to foreclose. Matt was in tears telling him that he didn’t know what his wife and three kids were going to do. My father responded by buying the house and putting it in Kurt’s and my names. He directed Matt to sign a promissory note saying he would pay my father rent every month. In the meantime, Russo could buy back the house for the same price he sold it for—or less if its value went down.
I was put in charge of collecting Matt’s monthly house payment. One Saturday night Matt told me that he didn’t have the money and had no idea when he could pay. It was likely a ploy orchestrated by the FBI to see whether or not my father or I would physically threaten Matt. Instead, I quietly offered to advance the payment until Matt could make good. When my father found out that I fronted the payment, he arranged a sit-down with Matt and me.
“Matt,” my father said in an even tone, “if you’re having a problem paying me, come right out and tell me. We can work it out. I can’t have my son going out of pocket. That ain’t right.”
Then my father turned to me and angrily shook his finger. “And you, I oughta break your legs for youse bein’ so fuckin’ nice.”
To the chagrin of the FBI, the wrong guy, me, was threatened on the wire.
My father had been magnanimous toward Russo for a share of the business, but Dad’s predatory instinct soon took over. He demanded 10 percent of what Matt and I generated in the detail shop. On the back of each invoice would be a code: a circle on the back meant ten dollars; a check mark meant twenty-five bucks; a line denoted five dollars.
My father told Matt and me that there would be three ends that would profit from the M&R deal. The first would be for him and me. The second would go to Matt. And the third would go “somewheres else.” “Somewheres else” meant the Outfit.
Matt and I were essentially paying my father extortion, and in true Outfit style, my dad wanted payment in cash!
I was gutted that my latest business venture had just been co-opted by my father. I knew at that point that I needed to get out from under the new business. The FBI was anxious to move in on its target. One more development could reel in the Calabrese family on racketeering charges.
One day I received a call from a friend at the Chevy dealership. Management had noticed that some of the automotive repairs on the cars sent to M&R weren’t completed as promised. The bills were padded with fake charges. When I confronted Russo about it, he denied any wrongdoing.
I felt the walls closing in. My father was extorting me, and my business partner was defrauding our biggest customer. In frustration, I put Johnny Marino in charge of the detailing operations and exited the business. I went to work for the Chevy dealer as a car salesman. I didn’t mind the long hours. In the end it was better to work long hours selling cars than being my father’s stooge at M&R.
But it was too late to walk. I was already set up for a fall.
The last straw came when the manager at the dealership told me that a car that was supposedly serviced by Russo had been sold to a newspaper columnist from the Chicago Tribune. When the reporter realized that all of the work had not been done on his car, he threatened to expose the dealer in the newspaper. I phoned Matt.
“What the fuck is going on? Why aren’t you doing the work on the cars?”
“I did the work.”
“Matt, I just inspected the car myself. You didn’t do the work.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line.
<
br /> “Matt, meet me at the Chevy dealership at seven thirty,” I said.
Meanwhile, my father stopped by the shop to see Matt. Marino was there. It was dark outside.
“Let’s go,” my dad told Russo. “We’re going for a ride. Follow me and you ride with Johnny.” My father wanted Matt to look at a car, so he enlisted Matt and Johnny to help him drive it back to the shop. Marino was behind the wheel with Matt in the front seat. When my father pulled his car over by a bridge over a river, he waved to Johnny and Matt to pull over, too. As my father walked over to Johnny’s car to get the directions straight, Matt became hysterical. “What is he doing?”
“Just relax,” Marino said. “Let’s see what he wants.”
Matt was convinced my dad was going to kill him and throw him in the river. But nothing happened. After the incident, Matt sat motionless in his car in front of the shop for several minutes.
Russo didn’t show up at the dealership that night to meet with me. He didn’t show up for work the next day, either. A couple days later, when I stopped by his house, I found the place empty. Russo and his wife and kids were gone. He had turned himself in to the FBI and joined the Witness Security Program.
With both Russo and Tolomeo in the hands of the Feds, all hell was about to break loose inside the Calabrese camp.
* A predicate act is an offense or a class of offenses that prosecutors must prove in order to achieve a conviction under the federal racketeering statutes.
After Matt Russo went missing, my father and I concluded that he was cooperating with the FBI. Now Uncle Nick’s question—Why was there a mirrored one-way glass window facing M&R Auto from the house across the street?—was answered. If Matt was a beefer, it was only a matter of time before indictments dropped. My father was feeling the heat, so he arranged a visit to his ex-brother-in-law, Uncle Ed, for a consultation.
I knew that if my father went to see my uncle Ed, Hanley might not be eager to help. A few years back, Uncle Ed came to my father when a bookie and a few of his South Side friends beat up his son Tommy at a local nightclub, hitting him across the head with a beer bottle and putting him in the hospital. When Uncle Ed asked Dad to take care of the guys, Dad put him off. Business was booming at the time of the incident, and while my dad knew the culprits, he said “he was working on it.”
Uncle Ed was still the president of HEREUI, the hotel and restaurant employees union. At one time the Justice Department considered HEREUI to be one of the most corrupt unions in America, although Uncle Ed had not been convicted of a crime. His powerful union gave him the ear of politicians and judges, including guys like then congressman and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Dan Rostenkowski, activist Jesse Jackson, Mayor Richard M. Daley, and President Bill Clinton.
Nervous about Russo rolling over, my father approached Ed on the premise that he was still working on finding his son’s assailants. He broached the subject of his own problem: What should he do if the Feds launched a RICO case against him?
Uncle Ed’s response wasn’t exactly what my father wanted to hear. Since there were no murders involved, his best bet was to take off and go into hiding for seven years until the statute of limitations expired. If my dad had been more receptive about Ed’s troubles with his son, he might have been more helpful.
The crew explored ideas of making my father disappear, including staging a fake assassination. Uncle Nick would shoot dozens of bullet holes into one of his cars and afterward, torch it. My father would drive south and set up base camp down in Florida, where he already owned a warehouse and a winter home. Inside the warehouse were modest living quarters with a shower, a cot, and some clothing. He already had enough cash stashed to live comfortably in Florida for seven years.
Rather than elaborately stage his death, he decided he would secretly escape. The timing couldn’t have been worse for me. Lisa was due to give birth any day. Now my dad, whom I had been avoiding for weeks since I walked away from the M&R debacle, was demanding that I drive him down to Florida to help him get settled. We would drive up the Florida coast, where I would grab a plane back to Chicago, but probably not in time for the baby’s birth. At first I protested.
“Lisa is going to have our baby any day now—”
“You mean you’re not going to do this for your father?” my father asked incredulously. “You have to do this for me! What’s more important than your dad?”
Adhering to my father’s wishes put me between a rock and a hard place. I feared that telling Lisa or my mom where I was going and what I was doing could brand them as accessories. Lisa wasn’t pleased when she heard the news. I winced as I lied to my mother when she asked about my plans for the baby’s arrival.
My father and I spent an entire day packing up the van, lining the inside wall panels with six hundred thousand dollars in cash. As we were ready to begin the long drive to Florida, the reality of my dad being a fugitive sank in—I wasn’t going to see my father for at least seven years. Part of me was sad, but as I thought more about it, I became ecstatic! Getting rid of him for seven years would solve my problems and would be well worth the grief and aggravation I would take for missing the birth of my child.
As we drove the van south across state lines, I was dressed casually in my bright blue, green, and yellow workout pants. I had donned a red sweatshirt with the arms cut off. My shoes were the pink, green, and yellow Zodiac loafers that my friends teased me about.
On the road, my father enjoyed eating at truck stops and staying at Super 8 motels. When we rolled into one truck stop over the Kentucky border to eat, the whole restaurant stopped what they were doing and gazed at the sight of two Chicago gangsters. What a sight we were: me, muscular, wearing loud leisure sweats, Technicolor shoes, and sunglasses, standing a full head taller than my mobster father. My dad, stocky and buff, was also wearing sunglasses. Then he looked up at me and hissed in a whisper, “You stoopid motherfucker!”
“Whaaaa?”
“I told you to blend in. Look at you! The whole fuckin’ place is staring at that outfit!”
When we made it to Florida, my father was set. He and I unloaded the money and his collection of aliases and phony ID cards. My father was prepared for his brand-new life underground and on the run. Plus he had a winter home in nearby Port St. Lucie. He was already familiar with the area.
The next morning we both drove up the Florida coast so that I could fly out of a different city. I had mixed emotions at the airport. I was sad to say farewell to my dad. Yet I could hardly believe I was breaking away. It was bittersweet.
As we hugged and kissed at the airport gate, my father had tears in his eyes. He couldn’t let me go. It was the same scenario all over again. The Good Father, the loving father, stood before his eldest son. And it felt good. On the flight home, I thought over the prospect that things were going to change for the better. My father could come back in seven years having missed me terribly. We would have another shot at a normal father-son relationship.
One week later, as I sat at the breakfast table at my mother’s house, I heard someone open the back door. I jumped up to find it was my dad, back from Florida. Having no control over his crew, his family, and me was too much for him to handle.
“I’m a man and I ain’t runnin’ from fuckin’ nobody,” he muttered.
My jaw dropped to the floor in disbelief. I was crushed with disappointment. The planning, traveling, and high drama had dissipated into thin air.
My father was back to stay.
By the winter of 1991, I was hiding and avoiding any contact with my father. We hadn’t spoken in months when I drove to Grandma Sophie’s place at 3645 North Pacific Avenue in Chicago, north of Elmwood Park. Sophie was living in one half of the duplex owned by my father, while my mother lived in the remaining half, 3643, with Kurt and Nicky.
I took the stairs down to my grandmother’s basement, where in the past my father, my uncle, and I had set up shop, meticulously keeping the crew’s books. I walked over to a spe
cial wall unit we had built. Instead of ordinary drywall, there was a panel of Peg-Board over plywood, set in place by drywall screws instead of nails.
I unfastened the drywall screws and removed the Peg-Board-and-plywood panel, revealing a secret storage space. I was careful not to touch the guns that were hanging inside. I reached for a light blue duffel bag that was hanging next to them. The duffel bag was filled with bundles of currency, wrapped tightly in increments of ten thousand dollars, nine thousand in hundred-dollar bills, the remaining thousand in fifties. At the top of each bundle, on each outer fifty-dollar bill, was a symbol scrawled by my father in red pen, a code he used to keep track of the money and denominations he had stashed inside his many hiding places all over town. My original plan was to save the outer fifties with the red writing so that when I returned the money, I could replace the identical marked fifty-dollar bill back on top. My father would be none the wiser.
I was taking the money to open a restaurant. My plan was to become a success on my own. I figured that if I could earn enough money to replace what I took, and once I had a couple of successful businesses under my belt, maybe my father would respect me or at least leave me alone. I didn’t want to resort to Plan B, which was simply to take the money, grab my family, and run like hell.
I estimate that I took between six hundred thousand and eight hundred thousand dollars. I didn’t bother to count it. I wasn’t stealing from my father or the Outfit. This was money I felt entitled to after years of counting quarters, doing the books, making collections, strong-arming late clients, backing up my uncle, and, especially, taking punches and putting up with years of physical and verbal abuse from my father. I knew that my dad owed me a sizable chunk of money from the ventures we were partners in, like the rehabbing and reselling of houses. I knew I would never receive my cut, and that I was going to get stiffed the same way my father cheated Uncle Nick and Ronnie Jarrett when they co-owned the hot-dog stand.
Operation Family Secrets: How a Mobster's Son and the FBI Brought Down Chicago's Murderous Crime Family Page 12
